Near the western boundary of the park stood the remains of the former Castle Baumgarten. Of the entire structure, once surrounded by a fosse, only a single tower—of considerable dimensions, however,—was left, flanked on one side by the blackened ruin of an ancient wing of the building. Sixty years previously, the old pile had been torn down. Its possessor at that time, residing most of the year in foreign parts, had erected "Villa Baumgarten" on the opposite side of the estate, near the frequented road, in order that when in his own country he might "live among his kind," and the grandly-hewn blocks of granite from the old castle had been used in building the modern villa. The tower, with the ruin adjoining it, had been spared as an ornament to the park. It crowned an artificial mound covered with mossy turf. Its base was encircled by a wilderness of woodland shrubs and plants, hedge-roses and blackberry-vines crept in and out of the huge window-arches in the ruin and nestled among its fragments, while the wild hop clambered everywhere, covering the grim dark stones with a wealth of greenery.

This ruin, encircled by the water of the fosse, certainly answered the end for which it had first been preserved; but the succeeding generation, being of an eminently practical turn of mind, had drained the ditch, and planted vegetables in the damp, rich soil. The castle miller had declared upon purchasing the estate that this proceeding had been the only sensible thing done by its former possessors, and had appropriated this spot for his own special use. As a child, Kitty had taken great delight in the "little valley," as she called the former fosse. Of course, she then thought and knew nothing of how romance had been outraged in this transformation; she would while away hours wandering and plucking with Susie through the wilderness of bean-poles and young pea-vines, never dreaming that if the dam should suddenly give way the waters would overwhelm her with Susie and all the green luxuriance.

Now, on the fifth day after her arrival, she found herself for the first time in this retired part of the park, and paused bewildered. The hop-vines still wove a leafless net-work about the walls, and the turf on the mound showed as yet no green blade of grass, but the April sunshine lay broad and full upon the ruin-crowned hill, throwing it into picturesque relief against the background of dark firs that covered the mountain-range in the distance. There was no trace of fresh mortar on the walls to tell of modern repair, every stone was old, yet none were wanting; the high arched windows in the tower, formerly closed by decaying wooden shutters, gaped wide, and within the stone window-frames the sunny, tremulous air glittered as if some imprisoned sunbeam were weaving there a mysterious golden web. And fresh life was stirring about the ruined ancestral home of the Von Baumgartens; above the battlements of the tower white and coloured doves were wheeling in airy flight, and from the thicket beneath the ancient chestnuts which flanked it on the south, two roes came noiselessly and wandered about the hill. The "little valley" had vanished; and, as of old, a shining stream girdled the hill around, burying beneath its bubbling waters, as if no human hand had ever usurped its bed, all that had once bloomed and flourished there.

A bridge suspended by chains spanned the ditch, and, guarding its hither side, lay a huge bull-dog, his head on his forepaws, keeping a watchful eye upon the opposite bank of the stream.

"Here you have Moritz's Tusculum, Kitty," said Henriette, who was leaning upon her sister's arm. "Once a castle-keep, with its paraphernalia of instruments of torture and sighs of mortal agony; only four months ago an undisputed refuge for owls, bats, and my doves; and now drawing-room, bedroom, and even treasure-chamber, of the Herr Councillor von RÖmer. In truth, the place still looks ruinous enough, almost as if the next strong wind would overthrow the walls, but all is really strong and firm; and there, beneath those projecting stones, Moritz's servant has his room; the fellow is to be envied."

Flora had come with them. "No accounting for tastes!" she said, drily, with a shrug. "Really a striking and original idea for a plebeian brain, eh, Kitty?" She passed her sisters and crossed the bridge. A touch of her little foot thrust away the dog from her path, and she ascended the hill. The roes fled timidly from her rustling silken robes, the doves flew away from the lower window-sills, and the dog growled, and slowly followed the lordly lady for a few steps. Standing above, her slender hands upon the latch of the brazen-studded door of the tower, and dressed in heavy light-gray silk, gleaming like silver in the sunlight, with puffed sleeves and skirt caught up on one side, she was the living impersonation of the beautiful emperor's daughter of the KyffhÄuser.

Involuntarily Kitty looked from her to Henriette, clinging to her arm, and her heart ached. The frail figure, its emaciation showing plainly in the close-fitting gay-coloured dress, was actually balanced upon immensely high heels. Her breath came in short gasps; but her whole costume was gaudy, and had so coquettish an air that but for pity one could have laughed. Within the last few days she had had repeated attacks of asthma, almost to suffocation, and yet she would not be ill: the world should not know that she suffered. A single compassionate glance, any pitying remark, made her angry and bitter. She had been more ill than usual; for Doctor Bruck, whose patient she was, and who could always give her relief, was away. A few hours after leaving the villa upon Kitty's arrival there, he had received a telegraphic dispatch from a friend calling him to L——g, to remain there for several days, he informed Flora in a short note. Any medical aid from Doctor von BÄr the sick girl persistently refused to accept. "Rather die!" she had whispered, when struggling with one of her attacks. Kitty had tended her sister with the greatest care, and now, putting her arm around her waist, she led her across the bridge towards the ruin.

How often as a child she had run up that hill and scrambled through the underbrush! How often she had peeped through the big key-hole of the door of the tower! The servants had said that in its cellars there was still stored powder from the Thirty Years' War, and that the walls were hung with "all sorts of horrid things." But she had never seen anything within but black darkness. A heavy, mouldy air had been wafted out upon her childish face with terrifying effect; and if an owl above happened to flap his wings, she would rush down the hill as if pursued by the furies, and cling with both hands to Susie's apron, quaking with fright. Now she stood inside, at the foot of a narrow, carpeted winding staircase, and admired the effect produced by the wealthy merchant's money. Without, a crumbling ruin; within, the home of knightly ease. The room her childish eye had never been able to pierce was a spacious vaulted hall, the massive arches of which supported the entire structure above. On the walls the "horrid things" were still hanging,—helmets and various weapons,—but they were tastefully arranged, and flashed back from their burnished surfaces the sunlight that streamed through the windows. To preserve the ruinous aspect from without, there was no division into panes of the glass in the windows; one unbroken sheet had been set into the stone frames, hence the strange glitter in them when seen from the outside. The place had been what was called in the olden time a fortress ward; in times of supreme danger, a place of refuge for the dwellers in the castle. As such, its upper story had been furnished after the most primitive fashion; now, its splendour far eclipsed that of the finest ancient banqueting-hall of the old castle, so long since swept from the face of the earth. When the two sisters reached the first room of the upper story they found Flora gracefully reclining among the crimson cushions of a lounge, with a lighted cigarette between her fingers, looking on while the councillor brewed the afternoon coffee in the silver coffee-pot. He had invited his three sisters-in-law to take coffee with him this afternoon.

"Well, Kitty?" he called out to the young girl upon her entrance, directing her attention by a wave of his hand, as he spoke, to all that he had effected.

She paused upon the threshold, a black veil thrown loosely over her golden-brown braids, her eyes full of laughter, her young frame vigorous and supple as if sprung from the giant knights Von Baumgarten.

"Most romantic, Moritz! The illusion is perfect!" she answered, gaily. "That fellow down there," and she pointed through the nearest window to the gleaming girdle of water, "might terrify us with his martial air, did we not know that a councillor of commerce of the nineteenth century sits within his circle."

He contracted his fine eyebrows, and cast from beneath them a dubious glance at her face. She did not notice it. "It certainly was hardly fair to grow turnips and cabbages in the bed of the fosse," she continued. "I see that now, although the 'little valley' was a favoured spot in my remembrance. Still, it is a strange and interesting fact, that the merchant of to-day renews the barriers which even former knightly lords of the soil wearied of and at last destroyed as superfluous."

"Do not forget, my dear Kitty, that I myself now belong among these latter," he replied, in a tone of considerable pique. "It is sad to think that an ancient race should so adapt itself to the spirit of the age as ruthlessly to abolish old and honourable customs and institutions. It is a crying outrage upon us, their successors."

"Idiot! He is more Catholic than the Pope," Henriette muttered, angrily. She advanced farther into the room, while Kitty mechanically closed the door behind her without averting her half-startled, half-thoughtful gaze from her brother-in-law. As a child she had, in common with all who came in contact with him, been very fond of him. His father had been an honest, hard-working mechanic, and Moritz, left an orphan at an early age, of striking personal beauty and ingratiating address, had been received as an underling in the establishment of the wealthy banker Mangold, whose daughter he eventually married. Kitty knew how devoted he had been to her sister Clotilde until she died; she had always seen him submissive even to servility to her father, and he had been uniformly amiable and kind even towards those beneath him; and yet there was now hovering about those finely-chiselled lips a distinctly-stamped expression of arrogance. The ropemaker's son was contemptuously overthrowing the ladder by which he had climbed thus high, and was so dazzled by his good fortune that he fell naturally into the jargon of a genuine country squire.

Henriette had coiled herself up on a low cushioned seat, and, clasping her hands around her knees, said, sharply, "Dearest Moritz, I pray you do not take quite so much state upon yourself; you might provoke some old mistress of these walls to awaken and see her grand successor and lord of the castle making coffee, while the castle dame reclines comfortably, smoking cigarettes. Oh, how she would stare!"

Flora did not stir a hair's-breadth from her position: she only took the cigarette slowly from between her lips, and asked, in a tone of assumed indifference, as she knocked off the ashes with her third finger, "Does it annoy you, my dear?"

"Me?" Henriette turned towards her with a hard laugh. "You know I am never annoyed by the freaks and follies of your genius, Flora; the world is wide: it is easy to avoid"——

"Hush! don't be so bitter, child. I asked from the purest sympathy for your poor chest."

The flitting crimson came and went upon the invalid's thin cheek, and tears glittered in her eyes, but she controlled herself. "Thanks; but expend your care first upon yourself, Flora. I know how your every fibre is longing to throw that smoky thing out of the window, for it discolours your white teeth like meerschaum, and sends a perpetual shiver of disgust through you, and yet you persist in the heroic self-subjugation. From a mania for the emancipation of woman? Pshaw! you have far too much taste, Flora, to have recourse to such distinctive signs of a blue-stocking, and you certainly would not sacrifice beauty to a rage for public glorification and applause——"

"See what a lofty opinion the dear creature entertains of me," Flora said to the councillor, shaking her head, and laughing ironically.

"You are practising smoking, and will probably continue to do so for three or four weeks longer," Henriette continued, undeterred, but with evident irritation, "because there are people who detest like the breath of the plague the odour of tobacco from a woman's mouth. You are trying to offend; this is your latest attempt to——"

Flora raised herself from her reclining posture. "And if it is, FrÄulein Henriette?" she asked, with an air of lofty disdain. "Is it not my affair, solely, whether I choose to attract or repel?"

"Not at all. Your only duty in this case is to please," Henriette declared, with vehemence.

"Nonsense! There is no marriage ring here yet." And she pointed to the third finger of her left hand. "Thank God, no! And you of all others should be the last to lay a lance in rest in this cause. You are ill, poor child, and more than ever dependent upon your physician; but he prefers to take a pleasure-trip, and to remain weeks away perhaps, assigning no reason for his absence."

Here the councillor put in a word. "Assigning no reason, Flora, because he does not happen to have told you all the why and the wherefore of his absence!" he exclaimed, with irritation. "Bruck never speaks of his profession, or of anything connected with it, as you well know. He has doubtless been summoned to some patient——"

"To L——g, where distinguished professors from the university can be had? Ha! ha! a charming idea! Don't be ridiculous, Moritz! But this is a point upon which I positively decline to argue with you." She held out her hand for her coffee-cup, and slowly sipped the delicious beverage. Henriette sullenly declined the offered refreshment; she arose, and stepped to the glass door that led out upon the adjoining ruin. It was the remains of a colonnade which had once connected the tower with the castle, and two finely-vaulted arches, resting upon slender pillars, now formed a kind of balcony whence there was a magnificent view.

She tore open one of the glass folding-doors, and, pressing her clasped hands convulsively to her breast, greedily inhaled the fresh air. In vain; for a moment she seemed in danger of suffocation. Kitty and the councillor hastened to support the sufferer, and even Flora arose and reluctantly threw away her cigarette. "I suppose you will accuse these harmless wreaths of smoke of causing this attack," she said, fretfully, "but I know better. You ought to be in bed, Henriette, not out in this dry spring air, which is positive poison for your disease. I warned you, but you never heed advice, and would fain persuade us that you are glowing with health and strength. And you are just as obstinate with regard to your medical adviser——"

"Because I do not intrust my poor lungs to the first poisoner at hand," Henriette concluded her sentence in a weak but very decided tone.

"Oh, dear! you mean my poor old councillor of medicine," cried Flora, smiling, and shrugging her shoulders. "Go on, child, if it pleases you! I know nothing, it is true, about his medicines, but I can affirm that he has never yet been so clumsy as——nearly to cut a patient's throat."

The councillor turned a pale face towards her and involuntarily raised his hand, as if to stop the slanderous words upon her lips; he was speechless as he timidly glanced at Kitty.

"Heartless!" gasped Henriette.

"Not heartless, but bold enough to call things by their right names, even if the hard words make my own wounds bleed afresh. Where is the merit else of uncompromising truth? Think of that terrible evening, and ask yourself who was right! I knew that a fall from the heights of a mere superficial adventitious celebrity was sure to come. It has come, more disastrously and completely than even I feared, as you must admit if you would not dispute the unanimous verdict of the public. That I will not share this fall every one who knows me must be aware. I cannot smooth over and adjust matters as grandmamma so well understands how to do. I would not do so if I could. No part is more ridiculous than that of those simple-souled women who continue openly to adore where the world unites in pronouncing that there is nothing worthy of worship."

She opened the other folding-door and stepped out upon the balcony. She had spoken with passionate emphasis; the pale marble tint of her Roman profile, seen clearly cut against the blue sky of spring, glowed with a gloomy fire; her eyes were full of disdain, her nostrils quivered nervously,—she was the very personification of burning impatience.

"At least, it was his part to convince me.—How I would have defended him then, both with tongue and pen!" she continued, thrusting her slender fingers in among the rustling tracery of withered vines. "But he chose to reply to my first and only question upon the subject, by an icy look, haughty as a Spaniard——"

"Such a reply should have sufficed you——"

"Not so, my dear Moritz; it was a very convenient and easy answer, and I am sceptical with regard to speaking looks and gestures: I require more. But I show you that my will is good in the matter by repeating again what I said at first: 'Prove to me and to the world that he did his duty well, for you were present!'"

He retreated hastily from the threshold of the door and put his hand over his eyes: the sunlight shining full upon the balcony was insupportable to him. "You know well enough that I cannot do what you ask; I am no surgeon," he replied, in a stifled tone, that was lost in an almost inarticulate murmur.

"Not another word, Moritz," Henriette exclaimed. "Your every attempt to defend him gives some colour to this girl's cowardly indecision." Her large eyes, glowing with internal fever, were riveted with an expression of hatred upon her sister's beautiful face. "It would be best that your cruel designs should attain their end as soon as possible,—to speak plainly, that your evident estrangement should induce him voluntarily to break the bond between you. Your heart, cleaving as it does to mere externals, would be small loss to him; but he loves you, and would rather contract an unhappy marriage, knowing it to be such, than resign you. His whole conduct proves this——"

"Unfortunately," Flora said over her shoulder, by way of interjection.

"And therefore I will stand by him, and defeat your machinations if I can," Henriette concluded, in a louder voice, and with quivering lips.

The glance that Flora here bestowed upon her frail, agitated sister sparkled with cruel scorn, but, as she looked, a startling revelation seemed to dawn upon her; she suddenly put her right arm around Henriette's shoulders, and drew her towards her, as she whispered in her ear, with a sardonic smile, "Why not make him happy yourself, child? You will meet with no opposition from me,—be sure of that."

To such wanton malice can vanity prompt a petted, spoiled, and worshipped woman! Kitty stood near enough to understand the whisper, and, although she had hitherto held herself passively aloof, her eyes now fairly flashed with honest indignation.

Flora saw it. "Just look what a pair of eyes the girl can make! Can you not understand a joke, Kitty?" she asked, half startled, half amused. "I will not harm your petted nursling,—although it really would be well to put a final stop to Henriette's petty malice. These two people," she pointed to the councillor and Henriette, "imagine it their duty to form my morals, and you, our youngest, just out of school, your head filled with crochet, worsted-work, and a few French phrases, side with them against me. You little goose, do you really think yourself capable of passing judgment upon your sister Flora?" She laughed aloud, and pointed to a chestnut-tree, from the boughs of which a white dove was flying. The bird flew high in air, a dazzling point of light. "Look, child, a moment ago it nestled amid the branches among its fellows, now its outspread wings gleam like silver, and it hangs in the blue, lonely firmament a shining spectacle for mortal eyes to gaze upon. Perhaps you may one day stand what thirsting, aspiring soul it resembles. Apropos, Moritz," she suddenly interrupted herself, beckoning the councillor out upon the balcony, "the old barracks that Bruck has just purchased must lie behind that grove,—I see smoke curling above the trees——"

"Simply because there is a fire kindled upon the hearth," the councillor replied, smiling. "The dean's old widow arrived there yesterday."

"And is in that miserable old place just as it is?"

"Just as it is. Indeed, the castle miller was too careful a man to allow any of his property to go to ruin; there is not a nail wanting in the house, not a slate missing on the roof."

"Well, I wish the widow Godspeed. Her old-fashioned furniture and the late dean's portrait will suit those walls extremely well,—there will be room enough for her pickle-jars and bake-oven,—and the water for scouring runs past the very door." She affected a slight nervous shiver, and, as though involuntarily, lifted her richly-trimmed skirt, as if from a freshly-scoured floor. "We had better shut the doors," she said, hastily retreating into the room; "the wind blows the smoke over here. Pah!"—she waved her pocket-handkerchief in the air before her face,—"I really believe the worthy woman is baking her everlasting pancakes even before she has a chair in the house to sit down upon. She is never content unless she is cooking." And she closed the folding-doors.

In the mean time, Henriette had quietly left the room. She had started in terror at Flora's whisper, like some sleep-walker who, on awaking, finds himself on the brink of an abyss. She had not spoken since, and had now mounted to the uppermost story of the tower, where the doves and rooks had their nests. Kitty took up her parasol,—she knew that the invalid always desired solitude when she thus withdrew from the society of others; but this room within these thick walls, the oppressive splendour on every side, and her domineering, capricious sister rustling to and fro, had a most depressing effect upon the young girl. The air that Flora breathed always seemed full of inflammable matter. Therefore she determined to pay Susie a visit.

"Just as you please; go to the mill if you like," the councillor said, fretfully, after in vain endeavouring to detain her; "but look here first." He drew aside a heavy Gobelin curtain, and behind it, in a deep recess, stood a new iron safe. "That belongs to you, you lucky child; here is your 'Shake, shake, little tree, gold and silver over me.'" And he passed his hand almost caressingly over the cold iron. "Everything that your grandfather owned of real estate is in there, turned into paper. Those papers are working for you day and night; you may draw incredible sums of money from the world in this quiet corner. The castle miller knew how to grasp fortune at the flood,—his will is proof of that,—but even he could hardly dream how his wealth would increase metamorphosed thus."

"So that you are on the way to become the best match in the country, Kitty, and, like the man in the fairy-tale, can floor your dining-room at your marriage with silver dollars," Flora cried, from the lounge, where she was again reclining, with a book in her hand. "'Tis a pity! Don't be angry, child, but indeed I am afraid you have been drilled in too strait-laced a morality to know how to fling brilliantly abroad your golden shower."

"Wait and see," laughed the young girl. "In the mean time, I have no present right to take one dollar locked up there." She pointed to the safe. "With regard to the castle mill, Moritz, I should like to attain my majority, if only for a single day."

"Does it not suit you, 'lovely miller maid'?"

"My mill? As well as my vigorous youth, Moritz. But I was in the mill-garden yesterday. It is so large that Franz is obliged to leave all that portion bordering on the high-road uncultivated, for want of time and labourers. He wishes to sell it to you,—it would divide very well into lots for villas, and would be a good investment, he says; but I think cottages ornÉes might just as well be built elsewhere, and I would rather let your people, who wish to build near the factory, have the land."

"Ah! make them a present of it, Kitty?"

"Such an idea never occurred to me. You need not smile so compassionately and contemptuously, Moritz. Such 'exaggerated sentimentality' would disgrace me, truly, in the Villa Baumgarten. And, indeed, the people do not ask a gift or an alms, as Doctor Bruck says——"

"Ah, 'as Doctor Bruck says'? Is he your oracle already?" cried Flora, sitting upright on the lounge and fixing her eyes with a strange, changeful expression upon her young sister's face.

Kitty's colour deepened for a moment, but she returned the gaze with cool gravity, and continued, without paying any heed to Flora's words: "I know, besides, how valuable is the fruit of one's own exertions. I prize what I earn myself more highly than the richest gift, and upon this ground the people should pay,—pay exactly what they offer for your land."

"You show a fine capacity for business, Kitty," laughed the councillor. "My barren strip of shore would be cheap enough at the price they offer; and that piece of fine arable land near the mill! ... No, child; glad as I should be to please you, my conscience as your guardian cannot allow you to lay aside your minority for a single hour."

"Well, then, your enterprising 'hands' must content themselves for the present," she rejoined, neither surprised nor irritated. "I know that at the end of three years I shall think just as I do at present, and maybe then I shall even be rash enough to lend the people the money for their building, without interest."

She bade a smiling farewell, and left.